Democracy is not the best system to get everyone pulling in the same direction. Indeed, in our present political era we have seen it perverted into a means of dividing people for motives as base as corporate profit and personal advancement.
Democracy, fundamentally, is good at precisely one thing: making sure that we all have a chance to have our voice represented. You already see where I’m going with this, I hope.
Proportional Representation systems are the basic tool of a democratic system. Moreover, at statistical scales, most PR systems make certain that people are represented both locally and proportionately. Minority voters are not lost amongst overwhelming signals in any particular direction. The diversity that can be supported in the halls of power increases massively under PR electoral systems.
There are those who will tell you that stable majority governments get things done. Those people are uninterested in the basic purpose of democracy. We aren’t trying to be maximally efficient. Despite their frequent conflation, capitalism and democracy do not function in the same way or to the same ends.
Capitalism is explicitly aimed at creating winners and losers and then overturning that order. That does seem to mirror the current exercise of democracy in Canada, but it was never supposed to. Democracy is about the conflict and compromise at the heart of a society.
The would-be kings at the top of a majority party like the Liberals or Conservatives have fundamentally lost sight of their purpose in our society. They imagine that they are meant to move the needle quickly and aggressively in whatever direction their supporters want, and damn all the rest.
But that isn’t their purpose. Their job – which, after all, explicitly includes debate and conversation and amendment and, yes, compromise – is to find the least bad solutions for everyone.
You hear a great deal about representing everyone, but the system is built to avoid that outcome. We cannot believe the idea that anyone represents everyone unless and until they insist on everyone being included in the discussion.
I said to many of my friends this past election that I believed electoral reform was the most important thing, even above climate change, even above the advancement of science, healthcare, social institutions. Nothing we accomplish is secure until we talk our petty-kings off of their thrones and into the muck of conflicting perspectives. It is the only place their real work can be done.
It is the only way we can ensure the future is democratic.